Blogging in the Classroom By Amy Hudock (Pinewood Preparatory School)

Writing Prompt

Please write a paragraph on the following writing prompt:

When you hear the word “blog,” what is your response?

What is a blog? The word “blog” is short

for “web log” Began being used by the

innovators of the internet to track their movements on the web.

Taken up as a diary form for personal publication

Blogging programs made for first easy and direct web publication

Now blogging going respectable

How can we use blogs for educational goals?

Engage students in a writing community

Create online student writing portfolios

Track student writing across disciplines

Foster writing across the curriculum

Assess writing program progress

Teach internet safety and appropriateness

Specific Applications Internal blogosphere

-- a protected space vs. public blogs

Class blogs controlled by teacher and posted on by students

Student blogs controlled by students and posted on by other students

Class blogs Allow the teacher to:

post questions or writing prompts for comments and discussion

provide a list of homework assignments

post a list of students’ individual blogs

Sample: http://lwpwritinginstitutes.blogspot.com/

Student Blogs Help Students Allow students ownership

of a creative, protected online space

Take “classroom publishing” to a new level

Make student work open to comments

Develop good internet etiquette.

Make them editors as well as writers

Sample: http://ash-chas.blogspot.com/

Student Blogs as On-Line Portfolios

follow students through their academic careers

eliminate the need for paper portfolios.

can be accessed from any computer

can be viewed by students, parents, and administrators

can be used to track a students progress

Create your own blog Go to

http://www.blogspot.com

Follow the directions to create an account (free)

Follow the directions to create your blog

Write down address and password and give address to Amy

Make Your First Post

Open the MS window into which you typed your response about blogging

Copy your response Go to your blog Click on “New Post” Paste your response into the editing

window Hit “Save” or “Publish” Click on “View Blog” to see your new

publication. Hit “refresh” if needed.

Blog Enhanced Writing Process

Prewriting  Drafting Initial Peer Response:

fact-to-face peer editing Peer Editing on Blogs Teacher Comments on

Blogs Revise and Bring New

Hardcopy Draft for Face-to-Face Peer editing

Turn in Paper (post and/or print)

What Students Say about Peer Editing on the Blogs Allows them to read the

work of all their classmates

They can judge their own paper against others

They can get new ideas They learn to set up

standards and judge against them

They get good feedback from classmates

They learn to write better by editing others

But is it improving their writing?

Researchers tend to say “yes” and agree with Charles Lowe and Terra Williams:

“weblogs can facilitate a collaborative, social process of meaning making, leading us to believe that weblogs . . . enable a comfort zone, a social environment where anxiety about the teacher and of school writing is reduced, while also drawing on other benefits of writing publicly”

Should you try blogging? Blogging can

enhance what you already do

It engages students Grading on-line

homework and assignments is easy

Can foster a writing community across your campus

Can be fun!

Webliography An Empirical Test of Blogging in the

Classroom http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/an-empirical-test-of-blogging-in-the-classroom/

Steps Toward a Successful Classroom Bloghttp://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/node/233

Power Surge: Writing-Rhetoric Studies, Blogs, and Embedded Whiteness http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/foreword.htm

Webliography Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric,

Community, and Culture http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/introduction.html

Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogs_as_virtual.html

Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogshttp://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/remediation_genre.html

The Labyrinth Unbound: Weblogs as Literature http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/labyrinth_unbound.html

Moving to the Public: Weblogs in the Writing Classroom http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/moving_to_the_public.html